Hope springs eternal for ducks

Tuesday

Oct 30, 2007 at 12:01 AMOct 30, 2007 at 10:08 AM

Jeff Lampe

The first ducks started landing 12 minutes before shooting time.

Those minutes became agonizing as green-winged teal kept buzzing overhead and splashing in and out of the decoys. Because there was no wind in Sunday’s forecast, the best action was sure to come in those magic moments before sunrise. And you just never know when ducks will stop flying.

Despite the lack of even a breeze for much of Sunday, we kept surprisingly busy for several hours at the Spring Lake Bottoms Unit. Across the area, most hunters expressed similar surprise after the opening weekend of Central Zone waterfowl season.

All the talk of flooded food and a stalled migration had fostered feelings of dread. Instead, many shooters spent productive time in the duck blind, particularly Saturday. Every local site harvested better than one duck per hunter for the windy opener and several did better than that, most notably the Rice Lake Walk-In (4.25 dph), Anderson Lake (2.43) and Woodford (2.11).

Elsewhere, shooting was better than expected.

"Actually, I was surprised we killed as many ducks as we did," Sanganois manager Doug Jallas said in noting his site’s unprecedented low numbers of wood ducks and a mallard migration that’s lagging well behind normal.

"Our wood-duck harvest (97 woodies in two days) is the lowest in Sanganois history,’’ Jallas said. "If we’d had the usual woodies, we would have really killed some ducks."

A few wood ducks would have rounded out our hunt as well. But there were no complaints in the blind I shared with The Farmer, Eric Schenck of Canton, Steve O’Neill of Pekin and O’Neill’s black Labrador retriever, Hope. Our hunt was a testament to the potential of the 411-acre Spring Lake wetlands Ducks Unlimited developed, then sold to the state for a bargain price a few years ago.

The shallow impoundments southwest of Spring Lake are managed for moist-soil plants and hunted only on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. First shot at the site’s four blinds go to hunters who were allocated permits from the state earlier this fall. If any permit holders fail to show, the blinds are tossed into the daily draw for Spring Lake.

I mention that for two reasons — to encourage permit holders to use them, and to tell anyone who feels lucky to risk a visit some Tuesday or Thursday to see if a blind is left open. Either way, this is a site that’s worth hunting. I’d say that even if we hadn’t shot 19 ducks Sunday, including 15 teal, two gadwall, one pintail and one bluebill.

Had we shot one lone duck, the day would have been a success. The scenery of a shallow marsh always is preferable to a big, open-water blind, for my money. The company was good. Hope chased down a few crippled birds we otherwise would have lost. The stories still were fresh. And the 18 eggs O’Neill fried with a pound of bacon sure hit the spot.

But it was fun to get the gun up repeatedly. And it is intriguing to see Spring Lake listed behind only the Rice Lake walk-ins in terms of average ducks per hunter. Over the past decade, duck hunting has declined steadily at Spring Lake. The bottoms offer new hope, at least early in the season before the shallow impoundments freeze. On Sunday, hunters in the four marsh blinds shot 53 birds and helped boost the Spring Lake total to 142. For the day, that ranked behind only larger sites Sanganois and Rice Lake — a fact you can bet site manager Stan Weimer will mention.

A Beardstown native, Weimer grew up hunting ducks. The Spring Lake Bottoms Unit has finally given him a real chance to manage for ducks in his corner of Tazewell County. He’s been after me for years to get down and see the site. I’ll gladly come back.

Now if the state would just acquire and develop a few thousand more acres of similar habitat, we’d have enough room to accommodate the hunters turned away over the weekend. On opening day, 23 of 58 hunters got out at Emiquon. There also was a sizable crowd that went home without hunting Rice Lake’s walk-in units. Although it’s hard to imagine, crowds could become a reality as Spring Lake as well.

ARCHERY IMPROVEMENT:

Things are looking better for Illinois bowhunters in the past few days. Deer activity has increased, and so has the archery harvest. The last two days were the highest harvest days of the season, with 1,432 deer taken Saturday and another 2,065 Sunday.

Through Sunday, archers had arrowed 20,252 deer in Illinois. That’s still well below last year’s total of 24,144 for the same period. But the gap between seasons is narrowing. Six days ago, the difference between 2006 and 2007 was at 5,825 deer. Now the difference is 3,892.

Another thing archery hunters probably will appreciate is a shift toward more bucks on the move. Illinois deer biologist Paul Shelton said sex ratios of harvested deer are shifting more toward bucks as we approach the rut. Initially, harvest sex ratios were near 70 percent does. Those same does now comprise closer to 50 percent of the harvest.

The top five counties so far are Pike (968), Fulton (501), Peoria (473), Jefferson (433) and Madison (427).